


Niggling Questions

by DizzyDrea



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzyDrea/pseuds/DizzyDrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk ponders the life he's lived, and the life he never got to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Niggling Questions

**Author's Note:**

> In an ongoign effort to clear out my hard drive and get the backlog of my stories posted somewhere online, I offer this story, written the summer after I saw the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot. I love that movie, and it spawned a few stories, some of which are unfinished. This one is (finished, that is).
> 
> Dialog in italics (center section) was taken directly from the novelization of the movie, by Alan Dean Foster. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Disclaimer: Star Trek and all its particulars is the property of Gene Roddenberry, CBS, Paramount Pictures, JJ Abrams, Bad Robot Productions and a lot of other people who aren't me. I do this for fun and for practice. Mostly for fun.

~o~

James Tiberius Kirk, newly minted Captain of the pride of Starfleet, the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, stood with his arms crossed over his chest, feet apart as if bracing against the winds, staring out the view port watching the stars as they warped past. Leonard McCoy, his good friend and the new Chief Medical Officer of Enterprise, would say he was brooding. Kirk preferred the term ruminating.

Whatever the correct term, he'd been doing it on and off since they'd left spacedock enroute to their first mission. He knew he wasn't the only one thinking about all they'd been through. Everyone had been affected in one way or another by the events of the last few months. Whatever their lives had been about before, it was the after, as the survivors had begun to call it, that they were left to deal with.

Kirk was finding that hard to do. His encounter with the Spock from the future had left him with a niggling question. One that he couldn't seem to formulate a satisfactory answer for. He knew he was beginning to sound like his Vulcan first officer, but he couldn't help himself. The question was relentless.

What had the other Kirk's life been like? The one who's father hadn't been killed minutes after his birth. The one whose mother hadn't married a loser who'd killed all her dreams one by one. The one whose brother didn't run away leaving him to deal with the fallout alone. The one who'd had his life and career planned out since who knew when.

What must it have been like to live that life?

Kirk was never one to have regrets. They were a waste of time in his opinion. You couldn't change the past, so why worry over it? He preferred to face the world head on and with gusto. Bravado, most people called it. Brashness, when they were pressed to be honest. Whatever you called it, he had it in spades.

There was a time when it had not served him well. He'd found trouble wherever he went, mostly because it was the only thing he wanted to find to occupy his time. He'd been an angry boy, and turned into an angry young man. That much he could admit. He was angry at the hand fate had dealt him. Angry at his father for dying. Angry at his step-father for being a bastard. Angry at himself for not being able to move on.

Then, he'd met Christopher Pike. The Captain was everything Kirk wanted to be and wasn't. And though he'd wanted to buy what the older man was selling, his anger kept getting in the way. Until he'd uttered those fateful words.

~o~

_"Let me ask you something, son," Pike said. "Do you feel like you belong here? In Iowa? Do you feel that just because your daddy died you can settle for an ordinary life? What do you want to do with the rest of it? With all of it, really. Spend it making the acquaintance of every jail between Chicago and St. Louis? Or perhaps you're planning on reforming and settling down, maybe getting into macrotic farming?_

_"Or do you feel like you might be meant for something better. That maybe you're supposed to do something special?"_

_Kirk felt like he'd been slapped in the face. He had always felt as though he was meant for something more than just the Iowa farm boy routine. But he never could quite muster up the guts to take that chance. Now, this Captain was pushing the one button guaranteed to piss him off. And it did._

_"Come to think of it," Kirk snarked, lashing out at the man before him, "I do want to feel special. But she walked out on me." Seeing the verbal slap hit its mark, he went on, really digging in now. "Thank you for the insights, Captain Pike. You know what? I'm going to take your advice. I'm gonna start a book club."_

_He made to get up when Pike delivered the one line that could stop Kirk cold._

_"Enlist in Starfleet."_

_Kirk gaped at the man sitting across from him. "Enlist in—You must be way down on your recruiting quota for the month."_

_"If you're half the man your father was…" Pike started. Kirk's expression hardened, and whatever else Pike might have been about to say died on his lips. "Jim, Starfleet could use a guy like you. You're headstrong but you're smart. One without the other is useful. Both employed in tandem point toward a potentially dynamic career. You could be an officer in four years. Have your own ship in eight. Unusual, but not unheard of. I know people as well as ships. I believe you could do it."_

_Kirk couldn't believe what he was hearing. Be a starship captain? It would have been laughable if he hadn't entertained just such a dream once, when he was younger. But that had been before the life had been sucked out of him by his bastard of a step-father, Frank, and a lifetime of hard knocks._

_Hardening his resolve, he looked at the man across the table from him. "We're even, right? I can go? Or do I have to sit through more of the sermon?"_

_"We're even," Pike said, and Kirk caught the resigned tone in his voice. "You're welcome for the bailout. Enjoy your next barfight."_

_"Yeah, that should be sometime later tonight," Kirk shot back. "Varies according to the fullness of the moon."_

_Pike stood and stared down at him. Kirk shifted uncomfortably under that glare. He knew he'd disappointed the man, but he told himself it didn't matter._

_"We're at the Riverside shipyard inspecting construction of a new vessel. Shuttle for new recruits leaves tomorrow oh-six hundred."_

_Kirk couldn't believe the guy was still at it. He shrugged off the words._

_Then Pike delivered his parting shot. "Your father was the captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better."_

_"Oooo," Kirk said, "you dare me. What's that—the playground version of Starfleet? Gonna take your uniforms and your bonus and go home if I don't play?"_

_But Pike was already gone, and his words had already had their desired effect. Kirk was thinking about joining Starfleet. Not because Pike had dared him to do better, but because his own father had saved his life, only to have him wasting it drifting from dive bar to run down hotel to anonymous jail cell._

_He hated to think that Pike might be right. About more than just this. Maybe he'd just ride his bike over the state line and forget all about Starfleet. Or maybe…_

~o~

He could have run; he'd become excellent at that. But instead, Kirk had actually shown up at the shipyard, enlisted in Starfleet and done the impossible. He was now a starship captain, and it hadn't taken the eight years Pike had predicted. Was this how the other Kirk's life unfolded? Is that how he became Captain of the Enterprise?

No matter how many times he told himself it didn't matter, he kept coming back around to the same questions. Wondering about a life that was his, but not.

How does one regret something that never actually happened?

Behind him, he heard the telltale swish of the door, telling him that someone had intruded on his solitude. A lone figure stepped into the room, stopping just behind and to Kirk's right.

He glanced at the reflection in the window. Spock.

"Lieutenant Uhura has finished downloading the mission specs from Starfleet Command, and I have prepared the mission briefing," he said.

"Thanks, Spock," Kirk said, barely glancing over his shoulder.

"Are you unwell, Captain?" Spock asked.

Kirk gave a small huff of a laugh. "I'm fine, Spock," he assured his friend.

"You appear to be more melancholy than usual of late," Spock said after a brief pause.

Kirk chuckled. Vulcans had the uncanny ability to understate the obvious. Still, he didn't want to burden the other man with his thoughts. He'd probably just call them illogical anyway.

"Just thinking."

"Perhaps if you shared your thoughts…"

Kirk looked down, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Spock, more than anyone else, would probably understand where his thoughts had been. And it might do him good to talk about it, maybe even resolve something. Raising his head once again, he looked at the reflection in the window.

"Do you ever think about them?"

Spock lifted one eyebrow. "If by 'them' you mean the alternate versions of ourselves, then no, I do not."

Kirk's eyes shifted back to the starscape. "I've been wondering lately if my life is anything like his was."

"The circumstances of our lives," Spock said, "and yours in particular, were altered the moment Nero entered our space-time. As the other timeline no longer exists, it is an irrelevant concern."

"Still can't help but wonder," Kirk said. "Do you think we'll ever be who they were?"

Spock appeared to contemplate the matter for a moment. Kirk knew that he had spoken to the other Spock at the space port, before the remaining Vulcan refugees on Earth were to depart for the new colony. What they'd spoken about, he'd never know, but the fact that Spock had shown up on Enterprise meant that somehow he'd found peace with who the other Spock was and who he himself could become.

"As I said, the circumstances of our lives have been irretrievably altered," Spock said. "However, we are more than just the sum of our genetic material."

"Meaning what made them who they were was as much about DNA as it was about the experiences they had."

"Precisely."

"It's a hell of a legacy to live up to," Kirk said in a low voice.

After a beat, Spock spoke his mind. "Perhaps it is enough for us to strive to become the essence of what they were."

"And that was?"

"They acted as a bridge between their two cultures. They were loyal shipmates," Spock said, then paused. "And they were friends."

Kirk looked out the window, watching as the stars raced by. Maybe that was enough. Lord knew it was a lofty goal. The images the other Spock had shown him of a lifetime he hadn't yet lived spoke of a life full of adventure, of exploration, of fighting and dying beside his closest friends. It wasn't a bad way to live. And maybe, just maybe, his name would go down in history as something other than the colossal screw-up he'd expected to be. That would be enough.

"Yeah, they were friends," Kirk said. A smile spread across his face, and his shoulders visibly relaxed. He turned and faced Spock, the smile growing. "Thanks, buddy," he said. "Now, I believe we have a mission briefing."

Kirk turned and headed for the door, pausing in the open doorway to wait for Spock, who still stood by the windows. "Are you coming?" he called out.

Spock turned and lifted an eyebrow at his Captain. "Indeed," he said. He clasped his hands behind his back and made for the door.

Kirk clapped Spock on the shoulder as they headed for the briefing. How did a human become friends with a Vulcan? _Now that was a question to ponder_ , he thought as they strode away.

~Finis


End file.
